It came from space and ate our brains Review

It came from space and ate our brains, quite the catchy game name right? The trailer and marketing material will pull you in with its humor and 1950s spooky alien horror theme. Team up with friends to fend off an alien invasion, but how well does the game live up to this?

The game has a very minimalistic and clean art design. Mostly dark, gray backgrounds with color introduced from the aliens, weapons, and items that can be interacted with. The shadows cast from your torch are quite impressive for a smaller budget game.

The visual design might be strong but that strength is not well represented in the level design. Repetitive and fairly unexisting levels make every level, even those out in the open, feel like tight dungeon crawlers. Tight levels work great for games like this but they need to be broken up with larger areas that can trigger a huge swarm of enemies or bring some kind of boss fight to change the pace.

The repetitiveness of the levels is worsened by the soundtrack which has a few repetitive techno style tracks that make you feel like you are going crazy when you get lost. The clinic level was one that really stands out as painful. There are some good tracks in the soundtrack, it’s just too much of a mixed bag. Repetition in the audio and level design is common and hurts the experience.

The main appeal of this game is multiplayer, playing alone is possible, but it is absolutely no fun. The most annoying thing is the lack of online multiplayer. I know we are always calling out for more local coop games, but if it comes at the cost of online multiplayer, is it worth it? Local coop is split-screen, which is strange for games like this. It takes a bit of getting used to as games like this usually put players on the one screen.

The game trailer does heavily push the fact that you can play with up to three friends “if you have that many”. Sadly, that joke was actually a fact too. You do need to have four people in the room together to really get the most out of this game. Without friends to play with, this game has very little to offer.

You would expect that this game would be fun and have some sort of theme based on classic alien invasions but it has nothing. No narrative, no missions, absolutely nothing at all. You start a level and the goal is to get to the end and destroy an egg. If you are playing alone, you have nothing to keep you entertained. Killing aliens soon gets boring as the combat is very minimalistic. There are a few enemy types but there is no strategy to kill them other than point and shoot. It gets boring fast when you realize there is nothing more to the game.

Playing with friends would most definitely bring the much-needed excitement to this game, it seems crazy that online multiplayer was not a consideration for it.

There are quite a few levels in this game, which will be a lot of fun to sit down with three friends and blaze through. When you complete a level, you progress to the next, but none of your unlocks come with you. Weapon upgrades are reset at the end of every level, forcing you to buy them all over again the next time. After you have played two or three levels, there is nothing more to experience. No high level unlocks, no cool boss fights. Every level is a rinse and repeat process. This may be fun when playing with friends, but it is your friends that make it fun, not the content of the game.

THE VERDICT